After a time an opportunity was presented to the brothers of taking a cruel revenge. Though Jacob was settled in the vale of Hebron, a portion of his numerous flocks and herds were kept by his sons on the rich pasture-grounds near Shechem. Thither on one occasion Jacob sent his favourite son to see how his brethren fared, and bring him word again. Joseph set out, and being directed by a man whom he met, to Dothan[40], or “_the Two Wells_,” a place about twelve miles north of Shechem, famous for its pasturage, he went thither in quest of them. From the rising ground, where they were keeping their flocks, the brothers descried the _Dreamer_ approaching, and straightway resolved to slay him and cast him into a pit, and then report to his father that he had been devoured by wild beasts. From actually putting him to death they were, however, dissuaded by Reuben, and contented themselves with stripping him of his coat of many colours, and casting him into an empty cistern, intending probably to let him die by hunger. But when they had done this, and had sat down to eat, a company of Ishmaelite or Midianite merchants (for the two names are used interchangeably) approached, mounted on camels, and bearing spicery and balm, going down the high road[41] which passed near from Gilead to Egypt. Thereupon Judah proposed that they should sell him to these traders, and he was taken up from the pit, and sold to the Ishmaelites, who paid for him twenty pieces of silver, the usual price of a male slave from five to twenty years of age. Reuben was not present when the cruel bargain was struck, and was greatly distressed when, on his return, he found that his brother was gone. But the others killed a kid, dipped Joseph’s coat of many colours in its blood, and brought it to Jacob, with the hypocritical enquiry whether it was his son’s coat or no, and informing him that they had found it thus smeared with blood. Even Reuben did not reveal the true state of the case, and Jacob, supposing that his favourite son had been slain by wild beasts, put sackcloth upon his loins, and refusing every proffered consolation, mourned for him many days (Gen. xxxvii. 29–35). Meanwhile the Midianitish caravan kept on its southward course, and eventually reaching Egypt, sold Joseph to POTIPHAR[42], an officer of Pharaoh, and _Captain of the Executioners_ (Gen. xxxviii. 36 _margin_). In his house, Joseph though a foreigner and a slave, gradually won the confidence of his master, who appears to have been a wealthy man, and possessed of property in the field as well as in the house, so that before long, in the capacity of overseer, he was entrusted with the entire possessions of the Egyptian, and the Divine blessing rested upon his house for Joseph’s sake.